>> SWEET TWEET OF SUCCESS: Twitter makes IPO plans official, by Jeff John Roberts, Om Malik: "Twitter's note that this is a confidential filing means the company's annual revenue is less than $1 billion... the company has recently received bids from hedge funds offering to buy shares in the company from employees and investors for between $26 and $28 a share, which would value Twitter at $14 billion. The company has raised just under $1 billion in funding over the last several years." GigaOM

>>>> Here's what post-IPO Twitter is going to look like: Over the last two years, Twitter subtly transformed into an advertising machine BuzzFeed

>>>> "We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale." @twitter

>>>> Union Square Ventures, Bezos firm among those that stand to gain WSJ>> SLO-MO DEAL OF THE DAY: After going private Dell says it will stick with PC business, by Chris Kanaracus: "Dell will invest in additional acquisitions and remain committed to its struggling PC business once a $24.9 billion deal to go private is complete, according to company officials. " Deck chair, anybody? PCWorld

** Gartner: Mobility's Impact on Remote Access:Organizations need a strategy for enabling productivity while employees are mobile. Read the free Gartner report to learn why a mix of secure wired, wireless, VPN and VDI technologies is needed to support new use cases for remote and mobile access. Download the report.

>> HOUSE ALWAYS WINS: The company that won TechCrunch's startup contest was the only company that got funding from judge Mike Arrington, by Jay Yarow: "TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington was forced out of TechCrunch when he starting a fund to invest in startups. It was deemed a conflict of interest, so he was ousted... Apparently TechCrunch wasn't all that worried about the conflict of interest thing... Yesterday, a startup called Layer won TechCrunch's 2013 San Francisco Disrupt contest, beating out five other contestants. Arrington's fund, CrunchFund, is an investor in Layer... Arrington was a judge at Disrupt, determining which company would win. He's not an investor in any of the companies Layer was competing against." Business Insider

>> CLOAK & DAGGER: NSA disguised itself as Google to spy, say reports, by Edward Moyer: "If a recently leaked document [via Edward Snowden] is any indication, the US National Security Agency -- or its UK counterpart -- appears to have put on a Google suit to gather intelligence." Cnet

>> ESCAPE VELOCITY: DuckDuckGo going straight up, by Woody Leonard: "DuckDuckGo, widely lauded as the largest search engine that protects your privacy by design, has just hit an average 4 million daily searches, so far in September. That's up from a 1.6 million average in March and 1.4 million in September 2012 -- much more than doubling its average in six months and almost tripling it year-over-year." InfoWorld

>> ADULT SUPERVISION: Nebula founder steps aside as company hires new CEO Gordon Stitt, by Jordan Novet: "Chris Kemp, the co-founder and chief executive of private-cloud hardware company Nebula, will step aside later this month to allow hardware business veteran Gordon Stitt to take up the chief executive position...Kemp, who will become Nebula's chief strategy officer when Stitt gets his new position on Sept. 23, has less experience with enterprise sales and has never been part of a public offering. In the new position, Kemp said, he will promote the company's product outwardly and drive company culture internally. But one can imagine that Kemp will also help on the technology side. He is, after all, a co-founder of OpenStack and a former chief technology officer at NASA." VentureBeat

>> BAIT AND LIFT: Microsoft launches iPad trade-in promotion, by Mary Jo Foley: "'Trade in your iPad, Get a min. $200 gift card,' according to the deal, outlined on the Microsoft Online store site. The gift card may be used towards the purchase of a Microsoft Surface or other products available through the Microsoft Store... deal is available in 'select Microsoft retail stores in US (including Puerto Rico) and Canada' but isn't available online." ZDNet

>> ABOUT TIME: 'Loud and clear' user requests prompt Microsoft to add IMAP to Outlook.com, by Juan Carlos Perez: "Outlook.com now supports the IMAP email retrieval technology, expanding the scope of client software and devices that can interact with the Microsoft webmail service... However, early adopters of the feature, which was activated Thursday, are reporting some problems… complaints include that messages deleted using IMAP-compliant client applications remain on the Outlook.com Web interface and that messages can't be downloaded from the server to their email clients." IMAP has been widely available since 1993. InfoWorld

>> RETRO GEEK: C jumps back to top of language popularity index, by Paul Krill: "After losing the top spot to Java last month, C has regained the crown, while the refined index also finds gains for Transact-SQL and Cobol." Yes, Cobol. InfoWorld

>> CIRCLE OF LIFE: Apple issues final non-security update for OS X Mountain Lion, by Greg Keizer: "Apple on Thursday updated OS X Mountain Lion to version 10.8.5, likely the final refresh of the 14-month-old operating system before the company supersedes it with OS X Mavericks." Computerworld

>> DEPARTURE LOUNGE: Brocade lays off 300 to pursue SDNs , by Jim Duffy: "The data center networking company last week laid off 300 employees, or about 6.7% of its global workforce. Headcount is now 4,180. The workforce reduction is due to a realignment of resources to pursue 'previously announced data center and software-defined networking strategies and cost reduction initiatives,'... [it's] implementing OpenFlow in 'hybrid mode' -- OpenFlow controllers interacting with the control plane of Brocade routers to enable customers to simultaneously deploy traditional Layer 2/3 forwarding with OpenFlow -- support for overlay network virtualization technologies such as NVGRE and VXLAN, and a partnership with NEC." Network World

>> LINUS LAPSE: Broken SSD stops the evolution of Linux, by Nick Farrell: "The development of the Linux kernel has been temporarily halted after Linus Torvalds's SSD on his main workstation died... A broken SSD should not really halt the evolution of an operating system and the incident does highlight some of the problems Linux kernel development is having. It is a little too dependent on one person and is not exactly disaster proof." TechEye

>> COURTSHIP: Cisco can't shield customers from patent suits, court affirms, by Paul McNamara: "A federal appeals court in California has upheld a lower court ruling that Cisco lacks standing to seek dismissal of patent infringement lawsuits against a number of its biggest customers - wireless network providers and enterprises -- being brought by TR Labs, a Canadian research consortium. The court passed no judgment on the patents themselves or on the infringement claims leveled by TR Labs against the likes of AT&T, CenturyLink, Sprint Nextel and Comcast." Network World

>> PRO TIP: How to get the best developer talent working for you: contract a community, by Narinder Singh: VentureBeat

>> TWEET O' THE DAY: "Twitter plans to use the proceeds for acquisitions, general corporate purposes and to expand into the 141-149 character messaging market" @inafried

** 10 Reasons to Fortify Security with Desktop Virtualization: Information security is critical. People access enterprise apps and data from more devices than ever, and to keep up, IT teams must consider new ways to secure sensitive information. Explore the top 10 ways to fortify security with virtual desktops. Download the paper now.